Making Yoga and Fitness Accessible to all being regardless of schedule and physical limitations!

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Coo, coo, ca-choo, Mr. Robinson

Darlings,

In Lady Yoga fashion, it is my goal to look back in history to see where we have come from, find the yoga in the moments past to keep us rooted in the present and passionate about where we are going in the future.

On that note...

On April 15th of 1947, Jackie Robinson, age 28 become the first African-American player in Major League Baseball. He was a star infielder and outfielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers and broke the color barrier in a sport that had been segregated for more than 50 years. His integrity, skill, talent and will was what got him recruited and Robinson played on the National League All-Star team from 1949 through 1954, leading the Dodgers to six National League pennants and one World Series, in 1955. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. After retiring from baseball in 1957, Robinson became a businessman and civil rights activist. He died October 24, 1972, at age 53, in Stamford, Connecticut.

Today, we think about Jackie Robinson as a leader, expert and inspiration in his field. Back then, we thought of him as an African-American who pioneered and blazed a path. He was both, true, but what stays with us most is his potential achieved in possibility and greatness, not his race.

Back just 10 years ago, I couldn’t imagine getting up into crow pose. It’s a little thing, perhaps, but eventually, I did it and was able to achieve more postures with each practice. Now I teach you to do the same. Yoga is about the postures and I’m no Jackie Robinson but, it is within that potential and possibility that inspires me to keep going in my physical practice and achieve the little steps to greatness I feel each time I share yoga with others when I teach and each time I can conquer a pose as a student.

Each day I teach and each time I am able to master my mental and emotional practice, ah, hem, like meditation and living yoga not just ‘doing’ yoga on a mat, I feel like I’m hitting a home run. It's my passion and inspiration.

Let’s use the inspiration from the great athlete, Jackie Robinson to realize our potential in possibility and limitlessness in our goals on and off the mat.

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives. - Jackie Robinson

Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose. – Tom Krause

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.” – Raymond Lindquist

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

There’s always a way – if you’re committed.” – Tony Robbins

It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” – Walt Disney

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. – Confucius

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it. Buddha

Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” – Maria Robinson

That some achieve great success is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.– Abraham Lincoln

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind. – Bruce Lee

A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.” – Bruce Lee

Everyone who got where he is has had to begin where he was.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

Be Content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” – Lao Tzu

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” – Albert Einstein

Time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time.” – T.S. Elliot

If we’re growing, we’re always going to be out of our comfort zone.” – John Maxwell

The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer.--an Air Force motto

Every life comes with a story ... and a possibility for a great adventure.--Kobi Yamada

Great things are only possible with outrageous requests.--Thea Alexander

Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.--St. Francis of Assisi

There are no obstacles to what you can accomplish except the obstacles that you create in your mind.--Brian Tracy

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. -Gloria Steinem

Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. - Zig Ziglar

Don't keep reaching for the stars because you'll just look like an idiot stretching that way for no reason. –Jimmy Fallon

Glory lies in the attempt to reach one's goal and not in reaching it.Mohandas Gandhi

Forget goals. Value the process. Jim Bouton

There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder. Ronald Reagan

Be Content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” – Lao Tzu

The gleam of an heroric act. Such strange illumination -- The Possible's slow fuse it lit…By the Imagination.--Emily Dickinson (Poem #1867)

I'd rather be a could-be if I cannot be an are; because a could-be is a maybe who is reaching for a star. I'd rather be a has-been than a might-have-been, by far; for a might have-been has never been, but a has was once an are. -Unknown

History is not your story…unless you stop writing…turn the page and write a new chapter. – John Settles